7 Stupid-Easy Ideas for a Better Breakfast at Your Desk

Why should your morning at work be sad? Make it tasty.

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Soaked chia seeds don't turn into plants, but they do get kind of pudding-y, and they're full of healthy antioxidants! Make a big batch of this stuff, portion it out, and boom, you have a cute jar of goodness to perk you up when you boot up your computer.

Sounds like a no-brainer, but adding in a little fruit does so much to improve the quality of your morning flakes. If you want to take it up a notch, make your own cereal like Jeff Mahin does at Stella Barra Hollywood. He mixes pecans, coconut, flax seed, maple, honey, and cinnamon with a bunch of grains — it stays good in an airtight container for a week. Weekend project: cereal making. Weekday morning: breakfast done.

When all you've got time for is a drive-by at your coffee place and you go straight for the scone/muffin/croissant, class up your pastry situation by saucing it up with a bit of jam or jelly. This beautiful baked goods selection is what you get for breakfast at NYC's The Breslin Bar & Dining Room — and look, that jar of orange marmalade made it so much more appetizing. On the condiment note, ketchup and hot sauce are nice to keep around your desk too.

Ryan Angulo, the executive chef and co-owner of Buttermilk Channel in Brooklyn, put together a simple recipe that's beyond delicious: crushed avocado on toast with an egg. Drool. To make a plate for yourself, take half a ripe avocado, put it in a bowl with a touch of olive oil, juice from half a lime, a few dashes of Tabasco, salt, and pepper, and crush all that lightly with a fork. Bring water to a boil and cook an egg in it for three minutes. Toast one side of a thick slice of bread, slather the avocado yumminess on it, peel the egg, and lay it on top of that avocado. Season again with a little more olive oil, salt, pepper, and tabasco. Enjoy!

Phi Tran of Princess Tofu goes for something kind of divine with one of her favorite breakfasts: a salad of melon with ricotta. She uses a vegetable peeler to make thin ribbons (but you could just do chunks of melon too), then tops with dollops of ricotta, honey, and nuts. It's creamy and sweet, crunchy and cold, and so lovely and different.

Copy what Pret A Manger did with their newest breakfast offering, a five-grain oatmeal that is delicious even without toppings. They use chia seeds, flax seeds, amaranth, quinoa, and steel-cut oats, a mix you could make to your liking at home. They sweeten that up with organic cane sugar. You can top with dried cranberries and slivered almonds, or do the standard raisin/brown sugar/cinnamon combo, or you can crumble granola onto it. Who's hungry?!